WOW! NEW TECHNOLOGY TEXTS!!!

There are three main examples of new types of texts as a result of the development on technology:

• Websites
• E-mail
• Text messages

Websites

1. The way the material is organized and presented is influenced by the dimensions of the screen
2. Much of the text is non-linear
3. Information is broken down into manageable segments
4. Graphological features are important, with the use of colors, animatios and visual images.
5. Websites are much more interactive than traditional written text

E-mail

The informality of e-mail, together with the interactive relationship between senders and receivers, makes it a form of written communication that is in many ways close to spoken language.

1. Lexis is often conversational, with the frequent use of colloquialisms and contractions. There is more tolerance of spelling errors than in traditional texts
2. Greetings and farewells ilustrate the informality of the medium
3. Grammatical features include loosely constructed sentences, which resemble the natural flow of speech. To type messages more quickly, some punctuation marks may be omitted, and lower case letters used where standard grammar would usually require capitals
4. Various methods are used to suggest the prosodic features of speech, such as stress and tone of voice
5. A large number of abbreviations are used
6. Emoticons, also known as smileys, are graphical symbols used to represent facial expressions and body language.

Text Messages

The main influence on text mesaaging style is the need to keep messages as short and concise as possible. In addition to abbreviations and emoticons, linguistic features found in text messages include:

• Words are shortened
• Phonetic spelling
• Letter homophones
• Number homophones
• Grammatical compression